ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
From operator to entrepreneur: David Garcia applies outage management lessons
David Garcia
If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.
But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.
Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.
For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”
In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.
G. D. Loesser, C. S. Pitcher, R. Feder, D. Johnson, S. Pak, M. Walsh, Y. Zhai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 156-160
ITER | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-558
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER Diagnostic Division is responsible for designing and procuring the First Wall Blankets that are mounted on the vacuum vessel port plugs at both the upper and equatorial levels. This paper will discuss the effects of the diagnostic aperture shape and configuration on the coolant circuit design. The Diagnostic First Wall (DFW) design is driven in large part by the need to conform the coolant arrangement to a wide variety of diagnostic apertures combined with the more severe heating conditions at the surface facing the plasma, the First Wall (FW). At the FW, a radiant heat flux of 35W/cm2 combines with approximate peak volumetric heating rates of 8W/cm3 (equatorial ports) and 5W/cm3 (upper ports). Here at the FW, a fast thermal response is desirable and leads to a thin element between the heat flux and coolant. This requirement conflicts with the desire to have a thicker FW element to accommodate surface erosion and other off-normal plasma events.
